You know how announcers talk about Shane Battier? How they say he “does things that don’t show up in the boxscore” and how his value can’t really be defined by common statistics? Well, no one ever really says those things about Carmelo Anthony. Ever. And that’s fair. Anthony’s entire career has been defined by the column in the boxscore furthest to the right. That’s where his performances live in their entirety, right underneath that points column, where he hangs bigger numbers than just about everyone. For better or worse, that’s what has defined Carmelo Anthony. The pursuit of points.

By that very definition, tonight could be described as an individual failure for Anthony. Even in victory, Anthony scored just 9 points in a 104-100 thriller in San Antonio that kept the Knicks undefeated.

But obvious team success aside, this wasn’t an individual failure for Anthony at all. This was probably the best worst game of Anthony’s career.

Sure, Raymond Felton (25 points) was a scoring machine. Yes, Jason Kidd (4-for-6 from deep) was on fire from behind the arc. But let’s be clear — none of that happens without Anthony doing the things he did tonight. The Spurs threw the kitchen sink at Anthony. If he was lucky enough to actually get the ball through strong ball denials, every off-ball Spurs defender pulled towards his side of the floor like metal to Magneto. DeJuan Blair beat up on him to start, then came Stephen Jackson, then Kawhi Leonard. And on and on it went like that — fresh body after fresh body to bang on Melo.

It almost worked. The Spurs built an 11-point lead in the fourth quarter after Tiago Splitter (who else, right?) went on a one man scoring run with 13 (!) straight points. But even with that happening on the Spurs’ home floor, where they’re almost impossible to beat, the Knicks stayed calm and never started pressing or forcing the action. Anthony was still thoroughly accounted for on every possession, but he crashed the offensive glass with relentlessness once the Spurs turned their backs. He hustled after loose balls, saving a few from going out of bounds. He stuck his nose in the middle of the paint and mixed it up, never waving the white flag by running out to the perimeter and demanding the ball.

Ultimately, it paid off, and there was one defining possession for this Knicks team down the stretch. Down 95-94 with less than two minutes, Anthony had a lane to the rim on the fastbreak. But instead of keeping his blinders on and bowling his way to the rim, or pulling up for a jumper, Anthony spotted Felton in a better position on the other side of the floor. Felton, who was really feeling it, turned and kicked it out to an even more wide-open J.R. Smith, who nailed the 3 to give the Knicks a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. It was a hockey assist for Anthony — another thing that doesn’t go in the boxscore.

We know Anthony can fill it up. But what we didn’t know is how he would react in the middle of a poor scoring night with these particular teammates. He trusted them, and there was no panic or pouting along the way. There was only passing — of the ball, and of the test.

This means Motiejunas can’t sign with the Nets, who signed him to the original offer sheet, for one year.

I bet it also means Motiejunas and Houston have agreed to a new contract. Otherwise, why release him from the offer sheet? The Rockets would be giving up a tremendous amount of leverage out of the goodness of their hearts – unless this is just a prelude to a new deal with Houston.

DeMar DeRozan is having one of those seasons for the No. 2 team in the Eastern Conference, the Toronto Raptors. During Thursday night’s win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, 124-110, DeRozan scored 27 points while adding eight rebounds, five assists, and shooting a whopping 13 free throws.

DeRozan also sealed the victory in the final minute with a huge put back dunk.

The Raptors led by 9 points with a minute left as they were inbounding the ball. A long pass from the baseline to a streaking DeMarre Carroll resulted in a blocked layup, but DeRozan was there to clean up the mess.

Here’s what you missed Thursday around the NBA while you were drinking homemade glow-in-the-dark beer with jellyfish genes in it (no, you try it first, I insist)…
1) Don’t play Memphis in a close game, they just find a way to win. Last week, when Mike Conley went down with a back injury and was going to miss six weeks (give or take), we questioned if Memphis could keep their heads above water. They promptly went out and lost to a very good Toronto team.

Since then they have won five in a row, capped by an impressive 88-86 win over Portland Tuesday. Impressive because:

• Memphis is now 12-0 in games that were within 3 points in the final minute. You get in a close game with Memphis, you lose. (Statistically, we know some of that is luck, that there will be some regression to the mean, but that stat has propelled a team has been outscored by nine points this season, one that should be 12-12, to the 16-8 record they have.)

• Memphis trailed Portland 79-68 with less than five minutes to go, and still won.

• Marc Gasol had 36 points and has been an absolute beast since Conley went down, doing whatever it takes to win.

• Toney Douglas — a guy the Grizzlies just picked up off the street this week, basically — comes in and is clutch down the stretch for them, including hitting the game-winning free throws with 0.5 seconds left (Damian Lillard tried to argue the call, to no avail).

The schedule gets tough for Memphis the next couple of weeks — Golden State, home-and-home with Cleveland, then Boston and Utah looming not long after — but do not doubt the Grizzlies. No team is as resilient as this bunch.

2) Bulls prove Spurs aren’t perfect on the road. It was bound to happen, the San Antonio Spurs were 13-0 on the road, they were going to stumble at some point. That point turned out to be Thursday night in Chicago, where the Spurs came out of the gate like they went out and had a big pregame meal of Lou Malnati’s pizza — 32 points on 30.6 percent shooting in the first half for San Antonio. The Spurs didn’t defend poorly, for example Kawhi Leonard held Jimmy Butler to no first-half points — in fact, midway through the first quarter Taj Gibson and Robin Lopez had scored almost all the Bulls’ buckets — but the San Antonio offense was dreadful. Throw a little credit to the Chicago defense if you want, but this was more San Antonio stumbling than a Chicago return to the Thibodeau era.

The Bulls were up 12 at the half and were able to hang on despite a strong second 24 minutes from Leonard (17 of his 24 came in the second half) and get the win. Dwyane Wade had 20 points and hit a couple of key buckets late to stabilize Chicago. For a Bulls team that is going to be in a playoff battle all season — they are the seven seed right now, one game ahead of the Pacers in ninth — these kinds of wins at home can prove huge.

3) What is it with Minnesota and second half? On the road, the Minnesota Timberwolves had played the Toronto Raptors even for the first 24 minutes — it was 59-59 at the half. And yet, there was a sense of dread for Timberwolves fans because all season their young team has just come apart in the third quarter — and then Toronto opened the second half on an 11-2 run. Minnesota, to their credit, crawls back into it, but midway through the fourth the Raptors go on a 17-4 run sparked by Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, and the Raptors pull away for the 124-110 win. The Timberwolves lost another game because they can’t defend well.

Minnesota shows flashes of the kind of brilliance that has everyone thinking they might be a contender in a few years. But we all expected too much too soon from this group. Those impressive stretches are followed by ones where they play like a young team, they don’t defend well, and they throw those good efforts away. Not that they were going to beat a good Toronto team on the road, but the Timberwolves can be frustrating to watch. Patience is hard, and Minnesota fans are being asked to show a lot of it. We can debate if it’s time to bring Ricky Rubio off the bench and let Kris Dunn sink or swim, but that’s not the core problem. Ultimately, the Timberwolves are young and playing like it. They don’t know how and aren’t putting in the effort to defend well yet. Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine, they can be the core of a contender eventually, but there is a lot of learning to do along the way. Tom Thibodeau can teach them. But it’s going to require patience.